The Nutcracker In 3D

It's Christmas again, which means it's time again for the dreadful holiday movie. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of yuletide classics out there, but every year we get at least one awful Christmas movie that will be forgottten by New Years. This year, Hollywood gave us Love The Coopers, which will most likely take it's place alongside dreck like Surviving Christmas, Christmas With The Kranks, and Deck The Halls. The cinematic equivalant of ugly sweaters and fruitcake.Personally, I prefer the odd Christmas movies. I'll take Santa Claus Conquers The Martians anyday over White Christmas. One of the oddest from recent memory has to be 2009's The Nutcracker In 3D.

I'm not sure if the filmmakers were all that familiar with the source material. They might have read a brief synopsis of it and just made up the rest as they went along.

Mary, Elle Fanning, is very excited that her uncle Albert Einstein, Nathan Lane, is coming for a Christmas visit. That's right, I said Albert Einstein. The same man who gave us the theory of relativity. He gives Mary a nutcracker as a gift. Later that evening, she has a dream that the nutcracker, Charlie Rowe, has come to life. He needs her help to conquer the evil Rat King, John Turturro, who has enslaved the nutcracker's kingdom. This leads to a violent battle to free the kingdom.

What an odd movie. The whole Einstein thing aside, I'm not sure who the filmmakers were intending their audience to be. It's incredibly violent for younger kids. And the rat makeup is nightmare inducing. And adults will just sit there with a wtf look on their face for the runtime. The Rat King is supposed to be Hitler, with his rat minions being Nazi like followers. This is seriously one of the oddest family films I've seen since Roberto Beningi's Pinocchio.

The cast is pretty terrific though, especially Turturro, who hams it up as the Rat King. Fanning is also good, showing that her sister Dakota isn't the only one with talent in the family.

This was a dream project for director Andre Konchalovsky. He supposedly tried to get it made for twenty years. He had a vision. Unfortunately it was a vision nobody wanted to see. I have to give him props though. He got rid of the ballet aspect, knowing it wouldn't translate well on film. A ballsy move knowing that he would alienate the fans. And it's pretty daring to take a timeless classic and mess with it they way he did. The Rat King as Hitler! Didn't see that coming in a children's classic.

Overall, I like this movie. It's not your standard retelling and does something new with the material. But be warned, you will wonder what the hell you are watching when viewing it.

It's available on dvd under the title The Nutcracker The Untold Story.